Effect of Time and Method on the Success of Grafting Adult Olive Trees

The research was carried out at the Izra Research Station of the Arab Center for Studies of Dry Areas and Dry Lands (ACSAD) between 2017 and 2020, on 50-year-old olive trees planted at a distance of 8 × 8 m for three varieties (Qaisi, Sourani, Shamali), with the aim of choosing the best from Where the method (patch budding or pen budding) and the appropriate time for grafting (spring or autumn), where the grafting was applied on skeletal branches with the replacement of phloem ringing (removing a whole ring of phloem with a width of 0.5 cm) from the cut above the grafting area. The results showed that it was not possible to apply the autumn grafting due to the difficulty of separating the phloem from the wood in large trees at this time, as well as the result of the low success rate of grafting that did not exceed 3%. Where the success rate of grafting ranged from 95-100% when using the Shamlali variety as the root, for both cultivars Sorani and Al-Qaisi as bait, compared with the Sourani cultivar that gave the lowest percentage (62.5%) regardless of the bait variety, noting that there were no significant differences in the number of buds blooming on the patch in all transactions, which ranged between 1.33 -2.3 bud/patch, In terms of the number of branches on the branch, it was noted that the Sorani variety was superior in the general average of (2.83) branches over Al-Qaisi and Al-Shamali when they were used as assets, and the opposite was shown if Sourani was used as bait. The overall average, regardless of the origin used, was 71.7 cm in al-Qaisi, and decreased to 32.44 cm in al-Surani when used as grafts. As for the hovering process, it did not cause any damage to the skeletal branches with unsuccessful grafts, since the tree restored the phloem and attached it self in the looped area, thus delivering the full sap from the leaves to the roots through the phloem, especially if the looped area was no more than 0.5 cm wide and no less than 0.2 cm.